


such fragile broken things

by griffenly



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 21:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4074202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griffenly/pseuds/griffenly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy gets PTSD post-Mt. Weather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	such fragile broken things

**Author's Note:**

> This hurt like a BITCH to write, but I hope you all enjoy the angst. :-)

Every night it is the same.

It starts with the showers.

He sees it, playing over the backs of his lids, over and over and over like a masochistic film reel his mind simply can’t shut off. He can feel it on his skin, the _burning_ , the way his flesh felt as though it would melt off. His throat is searing from the screams trapped in his windpipe, from the curses and prayers trying to claw their way out of his throat.

He sees blonde hair and eyes like steel, and he thinks this may be hell.

(He wants to scream at them to _stop, please, for the love of God, stop_ , but he can’t find the words.)

There’s metal around his neck, a physical manifestation, he thinks, of the chains he’s been tied to his whole life, of the shackles he put around his heart the day Clarke Griffin whispered a lullaby to a boy with a death sentence. (Did it start then? Does it _matter_ , now?) And it fucking _hurts_ , all of it, _all the time_ , and Bellamy knows this is a dream - _he knows he knows he knows_ \- and yet he can’t pry himself away.

Because then, suddenly, he’s in the cages, his legs bunched up around him and his breathing erratic (the _thump thump thump_ of his heart barely audible, but still there). And there’s a girl, next to him, with a scarred and broken body, with a fire in her eyes that’s so like his sister’s it sends a sharp wave of nostalgia through him. And they’re coming from her, the archangels with taupe-colored armor and sneers that feel cold as ice, and he can see himself banging on his own cage, and he screams himself hoarse to talk himself out of it ( _stop stop stop_ , he yells until he's certain he's swallowing blood, _they’re going to kill you_.)

( _I’m already dead_ , his other self whispers.)

They string him up like a marionette, his body dangling lifelessly downwards, and there’s an IV in his arm and he sees _red red red_ , the color of rust, the color of death, the color of the poppies Clarke had picked once and stuck in a jar in the med bay, swearing they were medicinal, but he knew why she kept them.

He hears her words.

_I think you should go._

A knife into his side.

_I can’t lose you too, okay?_

A balm to his aching wound.

_It’s worth the risk._

The words tear his stitches out, slowly, one by one, and he wonders if these Mountain Men can see her name interspersed within his blood. _Clarkeclarkeclarke._

His entire body is on fire, and her name is on his lips as the darkness creeps in.

 _It’s worth the risk_.

He wonders if he’s stopped breathing. It feels like he’s sucking in glass. It feels like he swallowed a fractured mirror, like the broken pieces are tearing at his insides - at his lungs, at his _heart_.

_I was being weak._

 

 _No, you weren't,_ he wants to tell her. He wants to gather her up into his arms, his beautiful, broken princess, and stitch her back together with reminders like these. _You could never be weak_. 

(Every night is the same.)

He hears her voice, again, but it’s softer, gentler, like the tide lulling the shoreline to sleep. She’s whispering his name - _c’mon, Bell, come back to me_ \- and he reaches for it. He’s clawing through darkness, nails scratching at thin air, trying to grasp her (she’s the light, he knows this - he can see her, hazy and faded but _real_ at the very end of this long, long tunnel).

She’s in front of him when he wakes, all that golden hair wildly forming a halo around her head, and her eyes are a soft, smooth blue, not the ice like they were before he left. Her hands are holding his face, gentle but sure, and she’s got a furrow in her brow, and he knows it means she’s worried, and he hates that he makes her worry. (Even if it’s about this.)

She smiles gently at him, and it calms his tremors more than anything else, her fingers rubbing soothing circles on his cheeks. He holds her wrists, letting his eyes droop shut for a moment as he sucks in a calming breath.

“I didn’t mean it,” she whispers, and he knows. _Christ_ , does he know. But he nods anyway.

“No,” he says, “you didn’t.” He pauses. “Can you stay?” he asks on a whisper.

She gives him a sad smile, the corners curving down just the slightest bit, and he would give anything to tug the edges back up, to right the crookedness he sees there. “You know I can’t.”

He nods again.

“You need to wake up, Bell.”

“I already am,” he murmurs, and she sighs at him. (How does she always sound so fondly exasperated?)

“You need to wake up.”

(Every night is the same.)

“I miss you,” he whispers, and it feels like he’s giving away a secret, long-hoarded in the shadowy crevices of his heart. But she gives him that melancholic smile again, and she’s fading away. He clings to her wrists desperately.

“I know,” she says. It’s like a knife dragging across still-tender flesh.

(Every night is the same.)

He’s losing his hold on her.

 _May we meet again_ , she had murmured into the skin of his neck.

 _We already have_ , he wants to scream into the void. _Don’t you know? Don’t you know?_

He wakes with a gasp, in a cold room, the blanket abandoned by his feet.

He wakes and he is shaking, and he is alone, and he marks another spot on his headboard.


End file.
